A framework is proposed for analyzing the consumption culture, including its micro/personal and macrolexternal covariates and critiques. Two main questions emerge: (1) Are goods assigned excess meaning, such that their pursuit distracts an individual from achieving true meaning in life? (2) Does the consumption culture destroy collective values and detract from issues in the public domain?
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Atwan, Robert, Donald McQuade, and John Wright (1979). Edsels, Luckies, & Fridgidaires: Advertising the American Way. New York: Dell Publishing.
2.
Barnard, Jayne W. (1990). "Exxon Collides with the 'Valdez Principles.'" Business and Society Review, 74: 32-35.
3.
Barth, Gunter (1980). City People. New York: Oxford University Press.
4.
Belk, Russell W. (1988). "Possessions and the Extended Self." Journal of Consumer Research, 15 (September): 139-68.
5.
Belk, Russell W., Kenneth D. Bahn, and Robert N. Mayer (1982). "Developmental Recognition of Consumption Symbolism." Journal of Consumer Research, 9 (June): 4-17.
6.
Bell, Daniel (1976). The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. New York: Basic Books.
7.
Bidwai, Praful (1992). "North vs. South on Pollution." Nation, 254 (24): 853-54.
8.
Boorstin, Daniel (1973). The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York: Random House.
9.
Boucke, O.F. (1921). Principles of Economics. New York: McMillan.
10.
Braudel, Fernand (1981). Civilization and Capitalism, 15th to 18th Centuries: The Wheels of Commerce. New York: Harper Row.
11.
Brower, David R. (1964). "Wilderness—Conflict and Conscience." In Wildlands in Our Civilization, edited by David R. Brower.San Francisco: Sierra Club.
12.
Etzioni, Amitai (1968). The Active Society. New York : The Free Press.
13.
Fox, Richard W., and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds. (1983). The Culture of Consumption. New York: Pantheon Books.
14.
Fraser, W. Hamish (1981). The Coming of the Mass Market, 1850-1914 . Hamdon: Archon Books.
15.
Fullerton, Ronald A. (1988). "How Modern Is Modern Marketing? Marketing's Evolution and the Myth of the Production Era." Journal of Marketing,52 (January): 108-25.
16.
Galbraith, John K. (1958). The Affluent Society. Boston : Houghton Mifflin.
17.
Gill, James D., Lawrence A. Crosby, and James R. Taylor (1986). "Ecological Concern, Attitudes, and Social Norms in Voting Behavior." Public Opinion Quarterly , 50 (4): 537-54.
18.
Hanna, Janice G. (1980). "A Typology of Consumer Needs." In Research in Marketing, vol. 3, edited by J. N. Sheth.Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, pp. 83-104.
19.
Hardin, Garret (1968). "The Tragedy of the Commons." Science, 162-3859: 1243-248.
20.
Heinze, Andrew R. (1990). Adapting to Abundance. New York: Columbia University Press.
21.
Hirschman, Albert O. (1977). The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
22.
—( 1982). "Rival Interpretations of Market Society: Civilizing, Destructive, or Feeble?"Journal of Economic Literature, 20 (December): 1463-484.
23.
Hirschman, Elizabeth (1985). "Primitive Aspects of Consumption in Modern American Society." Journal of Consumer Research, 12 (September): 142-54.
24.
Hollitz, John Erwin (1981). "The Challenge of Abundance: Reactions to the Development of a Consumer Economy 1890-1920." Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison.
25.
Horowitz, Daniel (1985). The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Towards the Consumer Society in Arnerica: 1875-1940. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
26.
Hoyt, Elizabeth (1938). Consumption in Our Society. New York: McGraw-Hill.
27.
Jhally, Sut (1987). The Codes of Advertising. London: Francis Pinter.
28.
Katona, George C. (1953). "Rational Behavior and Economic Behavior" Psychological Review, 60 (September): 307-18.
29.
Katz, Daniel (1960). "The Functional Approach to the Study of Attitudes ." Public Opinion Quarterly, 24 (Summer): 163-204.
30.
Kleiner, Art (1991). "What Does It Mean to Be Green?" Harvard Business Review, 69 (4): 38-47.
31.
Kotler, Philip, and Sidney J. Levy (1971). "Demarketing, Yes, Demarketing." Harvard Business Review, 49 (6): 74-80.
32.
Kotler, Philip, and Gerald Zaltman ( 1971). "Social Marketing: An Approach to Planned Social Change ." Journal of Marketing,35 (3): 3-12.
33.
Lasch, Christopher (1979). The Culture of Narcissism. New York: Warner Books.
34.
Lears, T.J. Jackson (1983). "From Salvation to Self-realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture 1880-1930." In The Culture of Consumption, edited by Richard W. Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears.New York: Panthenon Books.
35.
Leopold, Aldo (1966). A Sand County Almanac. New York: Balantine Books.
36.
Lovins, Amory B. (1976). "Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken?" Foreign Affairs, 55 (1): 65-96.
37.
Marcuse, Herbert (1955). Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. New York: Vintage Books .
38.
Marx, Karl (1966). "A Note on Classes." In Class, Status, and Power: Social Stratification in Comparative Perspective, 2d ed., edited by R. Bendix and S. M. Lipset. New York: The Free Press, pp. 5-6.
39.
—( 1974). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, edited by F. Engels.New York: The Free Press.
40.
Maslow, Abraham (1943). "A Theory of Human Motivation." Psychological Review, 50 (July): 370-96.
41.
Mason, Roger S. (1981). Conspicuous Consumption. New York: St. Martin's Press.
42.
McCracken, Grant (1986). "Culture and Consumption: A Theoretical Account of the Structure and Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods." Journal of Consumer Research, 13 (June): 71-84.
43.
—( 1988). Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities. Bloomington : Indiana University Press.
44.
McKendrick, Neil (1974). "Home Demand and Economic Growth: A New View of the Role of Women and Children in the Industrial Revolution." In Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought and Society, edited by N. McKendrick. London: Europa Publications.
45.
—( 1982). "The Consumer Revolution in Eighteenth Century England ." In The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth Century England, edited by N. McKendrick, J. Brewer, and J. H. Plumb. London: Europa Publications.
46.
McKendrick, N., John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb (1982). The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth Century England. London: Europa Publications .
47.
Muir, John (1954). "The Philosophy of John Muir." In The Wilderness World of John Muir, edited by Edwin Way Teale. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
48.
Nicosia, Francesco, and Robert Mayer ( 1976). "Toward a Sociology of Consumption." Journal of Consumer Research, 3 (September): 65-75.
49.
Old, Joe, StephenBaker, and Lynn Walker (1992). "How Do You Clean Up a 2,000-Mile Garbage Dump?" Business Week, (6 July): 31.
50.
Packard, Vance (1957). The Hidden Persuaders. New York: David McKay Co.
51.
Patten, Simon N. (1924). The Theory of Dynamic Economics. Political Economy and Law Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
52.
Porter, Susan Benson (1979). "Palace of Consumption and Machine for Selling: The American Department Store 1880-1940." Radical History Review, 21 (Fall): 199-221.
53.
Potter, David M. (1954). People of Plenty. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
54.
Rassuli, Kathleen, and Stanley Hollander (1986). "Desire— Induced, Innate, Insatiable?" Journal of Macromarketing, 6 (Fall): 4-24.
55.
Riesman, David (1950). The Lonely Crowd: A Study of Changing American Character. New Haven: Yale University Press.
56.
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1943). Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. New York: Philosophical Library.
57.
Schudson, Michael (1984). Advertising, The Uneasy Persuasion. New York: Basic Books.
58.
—( 1991). "Delectable Materialism: Were the Critics of the Consumer Culture Wrong All Along?"American Prospect, 5 (Spring): 26-35.
59.
Sheth, Jagdish N., Bruce I. Newman, and Barbara L. Gross (1991). Consumption Values and Market Choices. Cincinnati: South-Western Publishing.
60.
Siebert, Horst (1981). Economics of the Environment. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
61.
Siler, Julia Flynn (1991). "'Environmental Racism: It Could be a Messy Fight ." Business Week, (20 May): 116.
62.
Smith, Adam (1776). The Wealth of Nations. London : Cannan Edition.
63.
Sterngold, Arthur, and Philip Kotler ( 1979). "A Marketing Approach to Energy Conservation." In The Conserver Society, edited by Karl E. Henion II and Thomas C. Kinnear. Chicago, IL : American Marketing Association, pp. 193-207.
64.
Thoreau, Henry David (1984). The Natural History Essays. Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith.
65.
Tuan, Yi-Fu (1978). Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience . Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
66.
Van Liere, K.D., and R.E. Dunlap (1982). "Environmental Concern: Does it Make a Difference How It's Measured?" Environment and Behavior, 13 (6): 651-76.
67.
Veblen, Thorstein (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: MacMillan.
68.
Weber, Max (1958). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism . New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
69.
Williams, Rosalind H. (1982). Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth Century France. Berkeley: University of California Press.
70.
Wolf, Naomi (1991). The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. New York: Anchor Books (Doubleday).
71.
Yankelovich, Daniel (1981). New Rules: Searching for Self Fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down. New York: Random House.
72.
Zimmerman, Carl C. (1936). Consumption and Standards of Living. New York: D. Van Nostrand.
